Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(49)

But he hadn’t forced that hurt on her, either. Hadn’t transformed it into an emotional bludgeon, a way to manipulate her into changing her mind. Hadn’t argued or bombarded her with texts afterward.

He’d taken his dismissal with grace.

More grace, in the end, than she’d used in issuing it.

Mel pushed back her chair and stood, sympathy soft in her gaze. “We won’t ask you about him again. I promise. And if any of us gets too nosy in the future, please tell us, and we’ll back off. Immediately and without hurt feelings.”

“It’s fine.” April consolidated the leftovers on the table, carefully avoiding further eye contact. “In your position, I’d have been asking the exact same questions.”

Then they all got back to work, and she spent a quiet afternoon contending with various documents.

Documents—and doubts.

So many doubts.

BAWN HAD POSTED a new fic during her workday.

Eyes prickling and hot with tears, April clicked on it that evening.

The story was confirmation, if she’d needed it. He’d lied to her. Clearly he’d had internet access long enough to get his newest work uploaded. Which would also be long enough to send a brief DM, if he’d wanted to do so. Which he didn’t anymore.

As always, he’d used a phrase from E. Wade’s books to title his fic. This time, he’d drawn from a passage in the third story, one containing Lavinia’s thoughts about Aeneas: Though a half god, he is no less a man. And as such, prone to blunder full as often as any of his brethren.

Unlike all BAWN’s previous fics, though, “No Less a Man” ventured into the bedroom. It didn’t require an E rating, so it must not be too graphic, but it was his first story to be rated M.

That was . . . odd.

He’d used her misery ahoy! tag, as well as the alternative she’d once proposed, here be angst, and at her incidental inclusion in the story he’d written and posted without her help or input, she had to stare up at the ceiling for a minute and blink hard.

As she began to read his words from an unfamiliar remove, without having seen the story first, without having brainstormed it together or proofread it for him, she had to stop. Sinuses clogging, she got up from her half-unpacked desk and wandered into the cluttered kitchen. The darkness of the backyard through the over-sink window soothed her stinging eyes, and cool water helped her swallow past the thickness in her throat.

She tossed her shredded tissue into the trash can and sat back down at her computer. Maybe she wouldn’t read his future stories, but she couldn’t ignore this one.

After the first few paragraphs, she knew someone else had beta-read the story. There were more transcription errors than normal, but far fewer than would exist without outside help.

After a few more paragraphs, she was crying again, this time openly.

In the story, compliant with but not included in book!canon, Lavinia and Aeneas found themselves newly married and alone in their bedchamber, both trying their best to come to terms with a marriage neither had wanted, despite their obedience to the will of the gods and the decree of the Fates.

They kissed, pleasurably enough for both parties. They held each other. When he questioned her willingness to proceed, she gave her consent to further intimacy.

He began to stroke her arms, her hair, her back, startled but pleased by a rising swell of desire. Lavinia, though, remained stiff under his touch, and Aeneas eventually drew back in confusion.

In the context of Wade’s books, using the author’s characterization of Lavinia, the reasons for her hesitation were more than clear. She barely knew her husband and had expected to marry another man—Turnus—instead. She needed time to come to terms with such vast and unexpected changes in her life before welcoming Aeneas into her bed.

But even if she’d known him longer and better, it wouldn’t have mattered. Not for their first time together. Given her history, she would fear any man’s response to her angular body, her beaky nose and crooked smile and jutting ears.

To relax during bedplay, she’d require gentleness. Patience. Understanding.

But BAWN’s story was written from Aeneas’s point of view, as ever, and he didn’t have the faintest idea what his new wife was thinking and remembering, much less what she needed to relax into their lovemaking. So he blundered, exactly as Lavinia had noted he might.

Assuming Lavinia was merely shy and uncomfortable exposing her nakedness by candlelight, he snuffed out the flame of the pottery lamp by the bed.

He didn’t understand how she interpreted that gesture. Of course he didn’t.

He hadn’t spent a lifetime being sneered at for his plainness. His own father hadn’t deemed him ugly as Medusa and laughed uproariously at the cleverness of his own wit. No one had told Aeneas that any woman who’d deign to marry him would insist on darkness for the bedding, to better hide his homeliness.

Lavinia, however, had suffered those indignities, those wounds, and at the snuffing of the lamp, she froze and began to weep in the darkness of their bedroom. At his next touch, she ran, hiding herself away from his imagined scorn and disgust in order to rebuild her emotional walls.

When Aeneas finally located her again, sitting under an olive tree, drenched by a summer storm, he found a wife transformed. No longer wary and willing, but icy and disdainful.

He knew he’d erred somehow, but he had no idea how, and Lavinia wouldn’t say.